Museo de Arte de Lima

This guide to the Museo de Arte de Lima traces the palace's walls back to President José Balta's order for a national exposition marking fifty years of independence, and to the Italian architect who gave it a facade borrowed from Venice and Versailles. It follows the French cast-iron skeleton shipped across the Atlantic in 1870 and 1871, and the older quincha technique of woven cane and mud the builders trusted for everything above it. Reach out and feel where stone gives way to plaster.